


Love Song

by seraphcelene



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Serenity (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 05:10:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14157483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphcelene/pseuds/seraphcelene
Summary: Again and again, however we know the landscape of love.





	Love Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itsaslashything](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=itsaslashything).



> post-Serenity (movie). Written for itsaslashything as part of spacesanta 2005. Epigraphs are from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Summary courtesy of Rainer Maria Rilke. Pairing request: Mal/Kaylee, Jayne/Kaylee, Simon/Kaylee. Fic requests: Please include River in some way. A special, heart felt thank you to kormantic for the beta.
> 
> Originally posted 1/11/07 (I finished a writing deadline - mostly - so I get to post this here).

**one.**  
_the words i am about to express: they now have their own crowned goddess_

She stands in Serenity’s wide-open belly, empty of cargo, the bay doors yawning wide and hungry behind her. She cups one hand in the empty air, imagines the round, smooth, apple-flush of Kaylee’s cheek against her palm and pretends to tell her all of the things that Simon never will. Not the pretty, insincere things all boys tell the girls they like, but the real and important things that only come with true love.

“Meimei.” From beyond her, Simon calls. “We have to go.”

River smiles without opening her eyes, twists her head against the gentleness in Simon’s voice and the hot, dusty breeze flirting with the hem of her skirt. The breeze calls to her, teases her with the mustiness of summer and the pungency of herds. Lives being lived, people just waiting to be met, futures burrowed into the ground and waiting to be discovered.

As Jayne would say, it is a temptation.

Except this future is not meant for her.

“This is the wrong place, Simon. It’s too bright, too sharp. It’s all wrong.”

“River…”

The recently familiar sound of ‘don’t make a scene, River’, ‘do as I say River’, ‘please, River’, taints the sound of her name and she almost doesn't respond. It would be easy to pretend that she doesn’t hear him, easier still to pretend that she doesn’t understand. He never really could tell the lucidity from the chaos, never really learned to distinguish between who she is now and the River-That-Was. She suspects that he never really wanted to, clung to what he remembered of her at fourteen, blaming the Academy for the changes in her personality. She doesn’t think that he considered the fact that she had grown up in the years that they had been apart.

River finally opens her eyes, turns towards the glare of sun waiting just beyond the cargo doors and … Simon isn’t as tall as he once was. His eyes aren’t as bright or as blue. He’s diminished somehow, and she wonders how he managed to hold onto her for so long. Thinks of them, so far from where they started, and now, tramping along the unseemly edges of space.

The problem, River tells herself, is that Simon will always be a stranger here.

River moves closer, ignores Simon’s outstretched hand, and touches his cheek. Fits his face into the cup of her palm and presses her thoughts of Kaylee into his flesh. In a way, she wishes that his heart were as broken as Kaylee’s. Wishes that he won't recover as quickly as she knows he will.

Simon is more mercenary than he looks. People overlook the sharp intelligence in his eyes. Enamored as they are by the sweetness of his face, they take him for nothing more than some fulan son of a merchant.

“You were always the wrong shape, Simon. You wouldn’t have come if not for me.” River can‘t see beyond the shine of tears. “Sorry for that.”

Simon has always been obtuse about certain things, the things he doesn’t want to know. It is their history. When they were children, the way that he changed the subject when she corrected his homework. The recent past is marked by the months it took him to break the code in her letters. So simple, and it had taken him months.

At least he figured it out. She knows, now, that their parents were never going to come.

What he won’t see is that their relationship has changed. Like he wouldn’t see the differences between him and Kaylee until it was too late. After Kaylee was already too far gone to think of catching herself. He ignored her rough edges and the earthiness of her smile. Just thought of the teddy bear shaped patches on her trousers and never considered what he’d do with her once he was no longer a fugitive.

And then the day came and they were free and pardoned and apologized to. The ‘verse wide open for them and no need to look over their shoulders ‘cept to wave zai jian to the people they left behind.

River tried to warn them.

Of course Mal had words to offer as well. “Planet side ain’t no place for Kaylee. Specially a place like Capital City.”

Inara looked sideways and told him to leave it alone, “They’re in love,” she said.

Even Kaylee, blinded as she was, managed to pick-up on it through the glaze of her happiness before Simon did. She smiled at him, fingers twisted up in her lap.

“Wouldn’t be right. Not with your kind of people, Simon. You and Inara, you’re so different. Me. Always got oil under my nails and … dirty. I wouldn’t know what to say or how to act.”

He told her it wouldn’t be like that. It would be different.

River could hear beyond the meaning of his words, see the impossible, heartbreak of it all. Sees beyond what Simon’s face whispers and what his heart only half hopes is real. The truth is like an ache between them.

“River. Meimei. I won’t leave without you.”

Somewhere, behind his eyes, he really does believe that.

“Yes,” River says. “You will.”

“You stayin’ or goin’ Doc. We ain‘t got all day” Mal stands with his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his trousers, face full of shadows. “Zoe’s waitin for you. She’ll take you and Inara into town. Should be able to catch a transport off-world from there.”

“Time to go, Simon.” River touches his nose, his eyes, his lips. Memorizes the shape of his face with her fingertips. “And I’m not coming with you.”

The Captain had said she could stay if she were of a mind.

“Don’t you get to worryin,” he said. “We’ll take real good care of her.”

Serenity was home and River could think clearer in the black.

River can hear the shape of her name in Simon’s mouth and presses her fingers firmly against his lips.

“Goodbye, Simon.”

 

**two.**  
_the scent of bitter almonds always reminds him of the fate of unrequited love_

Kaylee cries in the mess, cries in the engine room and in her bunk. She cries when they hit atmo, core planet or border moon, makes no never mind. Says that it ain’t just that Simon’s gone. That was bound to happen. They was just too different, her and Simon, apples and oranges.

“It’s just. What with Wash and Shepard Book. And then Inara leaving again. It’s too much for a body to handle all at once.”

River sits with her sometimes, hums some bit of pretty to make Kaylee smile. Hums until she can’t shut out Kaylee’s tears and the humming becomes nothing more than noise.

She can feel it in her bones, the tug and pull of Kaylee’s miserable heartache. Forgets where she begins, what’s Kaylee and what’s River. Their want is too much of the same: Simon. The longing for arms to hold and lips to kiss, a shoulder to lean against. Someone to whisper the most secret secrets to.

At first, Kaylee’s sadness is like free falling, a headlong rush of weariness and upset. Then they spent long hours in the Engine Room. River sitting with her back pressed up against the Serenity's engine, knees drawn into her chest, watching Kaylee take apart and re-build all of Serenity's moving parts, each and every one.

Then sitting in the mess, cups of tea between them and sometimes Jayne at the table, too, sharpening his knives.

Mal avoids them. Lost in his own wretchedness. Lost in a sadness that has nothing at all to do with Simon. He holes up in the bridge mostly, to avoid Zoe’s empty eyes and Kaylee’s weeping. River stays as far away from Mal as she can. His thoughts lashe like a storm, as violent as Zoe’s are serene.

Today, again, River feels the swell of Kaylee’s sadness. Rises from her chair and pads down cold metal stairs to find her.

She is startled to find that Mal has gotten there first. Standing in the doorway with his arms crossed watching damp and crumpled Kaylee huddled into the sofa against the back wall. Finally he moves towards the curl of Kaylee in the quiet room. She’s cried herself into hiccups and Mal scoops her up and cuddles her into his lap as if she were the tiniest little baby.

He rocks her against his chest. Whispers into her hair, “Kaylee. Little Kaylee.”

River feels the knot of Kaylee’s misery loosen in the center of her chest. Listens just beyond the door as Kaylee sighs and settles. Listens as Mal quiets, too.

 

**three.**  
_… observe with care, they almost always have crystals in their hearts_

 

They lay on the floor of the hold, staring at the ceiling and pretending to pick shapes out of clouds. Five months and Kaylee has finally begun to play again. Smiles come easier and River can almost see the true glow of happiness reflected in Kaylee’s eyes.

“A train,” Kaylee giggles, always thinking of slick things with moving parts.

“A rabbit.”

“Where?” Kaylee pretends to stare deep into fluffy white clouds.

River plays along, points up into the tangle of cables stretching across the ceiling. “There. Right there,” she says.

“Where?” Kaylee rolls closer, her fingers skittering along River’s up-stretched arm, making River laugh. “I don’t see anything of the sort.”

River squeals, twists away from her and Kaylee follows. Her tickling fingers dance across River’s ribs and into the sensitive curve of her neck. They wrestle there on the floor, the hem of Kaylee’s pink shirt rising and falling as they tussle.

“Kaylee, no!” River shrieks, laughing, her fingers darting into the folds of Kaylee’s body while she tries to get away all at the same time. Busy hands graze soft places and River knows the moment that he steps onto the catwalk. The moment that Mal catches them, with Kaylee’s shirt riding up between them.

Mal is like a tightening in River's belly, an angry breathlessness. She sees them, her and Kaylee, through Mal’s eyes. Admires the peek-a-boo glimpses of Kaylee’s belly as she moves. Catches himself because it isn’t right to think of Kaylee that way. As bare middriff and soft skin.

The sound of Kaylee's laughter, joyous and carefree, makes his heart skip a beat.

River glances up into Mal’s fierce eyes staring down at them. Staring down at laughing Kaylee romping on the floor.

He calls her name unnecessarily loud and sharp: “Kaylee.”

Kaylee startled, turns her shining, smiling face upwards like a flower to the sun.

“Yeah, Cap’n?” Kaylee’s dancing fingers continue to poke, seeking a way around River’s arms crossed protectively across her midsection.

Mal’s voice softens. “Come on, now. Enough fooling around. We’ll be landing in a few hours and we got someone coming to take a look at the shuttle.”

“’Nara’s shuttle?” Kaylee’s fingers still, her sunny smile faltering. Inara's name is like the winter frost, and the air around them cools.

“My. Shuttle. If anybody’d care to remember. Now, I need you to give it a goin’ over. Make sure she’s tip top. Dong ma?”

“Yes, sir. Cap’n.” Kaylee scrambles up, the sound of her shoes echoing.

Mal watches her leave, thunder settling into the arch of his brow.

River kneels on the floor watching them both.

 

**four.**  
_we cannot intervene in the rotation of the earth_

She watches them from Serenity’s curves, hides, as Mal and Kaylee explore each other in the shadows when they think no one’s looking. Stolen kisses on the empty bridge, cuddled into the pilot’s chair the same way that Zoe and Wash once did. Zoe doesn’t go to the bridge much anymore, and it is quiet there. They lean back into the seat, Kaylee’s legs draped over Mal’s, her tiny fingers tracing the edge of his jaw or threading through his hair.

The way he says her name is a caress.

“Kaylee.” It is a softer sound than anyone ever imagined.

“River, honey, you sure you don’t wanna play one more round of gin,” Kaylee’s eyes flash wanting at Mal, but she’s too polite and likes River too much not to offer this opportunity for company.

They worry about her, she knows. Worry that she is lonely without Simon. But it‘s been over a year and other people have come and gone in the meantime.

“I mean, since you’re winnin’ and all,” Kaylee blushes, her dimples filling with scarlet.

River flushes with her, listens to the private things Kaylee’s eyes say to Mal: I want you. I need you. I love you.

Rememberances of Kaylee flash in the corners of River’s mouth when she smiles. What’s become the sunlight in Mal’s eyes hovers over her lips, sinks into her breastbone, into the center of her chest, rising and falling and fluttering in her throat.

“No,” River says. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”

She kisses Kaylee on the corner of her smile, gently touches Mal’s shoulder on her way to her quarters.

River still lives in the guest quarters. Only moved her things across to the room Simon used to occupy. She likes it there. It keeps Simon close to her; she can still smell him in the walls.

The guest quarters are far enough away from crew quarters that River doesn’t hear them, doesn’t sense them unless she wants to. She closes herself off to everything except Serenity’s contented hum and the stars beyond the bulkhead.

Tonight, Mal and Kaylee are so in love that it shouts at her from every wall and stairway. Over the months Serenity has soaked up their affection, their lust, and just now she’s begun to leak.

No one gets away unscathed, the entire ship is infected with their joy.

It is easy. Fine. The sway of Mal and Kaylee in her mind, the taste of their love, is like the sweetness of strawberries, and the lace of their fingers together is as natural as breathing.


End file.
